Fair, remember me not to employ fresh graduates from such universities.

Studying should definitely not be a struggle, but it should important to also know how to achieve good results. If you achieve good results regardless of what you do, then you'll likely tend to get lazy.

I didn't study so many years ago, but remember my professors clearly saying that the highest vote was reserved for excellence and not just knowing the subject.

It would be quite common that out of 100 students none got the highest vote, nobody complained.

I read this book called tenure hacks:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24945544

It’s a good one, useful advice for junior faculty. Makes a compelling argument, similar to the article, that the requirement of good and improving student evaluations for promotion (that is, survival) means that the professor needs to give high grades- students won’t give a good evaluation if they are graded by a hardass.

Specifically, he recommends giving As at the end of the course when evaluations are due, and have any more stict assessments (if necessary) in writing, in the midterms.

It’s backwards that no life outcome of the students is a performance metric of the teacher, except the evaluation that the student submits after they receive their grade.

I didn't study so many years ago

I am not from the same country as Duke university. Universities in other places work quite different from that. We have employees from many other countries and I'm quite satisfied by their work and understanding, even the youngest ones.

send letters explaining why the letters actually mean.

Not sure what you mean; if you refer to explaining why their grade is not top level... What kinds of jobs are people getting over there? I'd laugh at someone asking my university grade to employ me. No, I have never asked what the grade of a candidate was. Rarely look at which university they studied, I might at most be interested in which countries they studied and worked and what their thesis was about.

I can't say I see dropping out of a PhD program after a year (decision to was close to the start of second semester but needed the stipend while getting my resume together) as being all that bad. I sometimes wish I had gotten a scondary ed degree with my major but then I think about if its kinda like this to.